The life of Samuel Colt, the pioneering industrialist behind Hartford’s Colt firearms factory, will be the subject of a free noontime talk at the Old State House on Thursday, August 17, by Bert Barnett, the National Park Service ranger assigned to the Coltsville National Historical Park.

“Through providing efficient arms required during the 19th century, Colt revolutionized the arms industry and, though not alone in this role, he was unique and undeniably controversial,” the Old State House says in its announcement.

Congress created the national historic park in 2014. The official opening is expected soon, but Barnett already gives walking tours of the component properties, including the factory complex, the city’s Colt Park (formerly part of the Colt estate), and the Church of the Good Shepherd, which Elizabeth Colt commissioned as a memorial to her husband, who was only 47 when he died in 1862.

You can keep up on Coltsville news in a variety of places, among them:

For a while, it looked as though the Polish National Home on Charter Oak Avenue had settled into hidden-gem status. Architecture buffs loved its circa-1930 Art Deco facade and beautiful ballroom; lovers of pierogies and beer always had a home in the unpretentious dining room. But even Hartford boosters would forget to list the Home as one of the city’s attractions.

Fortunately, that appears to be changing. The Hartford Courant has taken notice of a new generation of leaders at the Home. One of them, board president Rob Kwasnicki, told the newspaper that the Home aims to boost membership by not only remaining loyal to Polish heritage and culture but also becoming an engine of progress for the Charter Oak neighborhood and the city as a whole. Steps so far have included sprucing up the rooms new members are most likely to use, like the dining room, and loading up the calendar with community events.

“We have an opportunity for the Polish National Home to be be what it has always been: an anchor in the community,” Kwasnicki said. “We can be a focal point, a gathering place, a beacon or central point of informational disbursement.”

Amazingly, it will be 20 years on Thursday since the Hartford Whalers played their last game. On April 13, 1997, they defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning at the Civic Center, 2-1, then decamped for Raleigh, North Carolina and changed their name to the Carolina Hurricanes.

It still hurts.

The Whale began life in 1971 as the Boston-based New England Whalers of the World Hockey League. The team moved to Hartford for the 1974-75 season, playing its first game in the brand-spanking-new Hartford Civic Center Coliseum on January 11, 1975. The team thrived in Hartford, which led to it becoming one of just four WHA teams accepted into the National Hockey League in the WHA-NHL merger of 1979. Along with the new league came a new name: the Hartford Whalers.

Software entrepreneur Peter Karmanos Jr. bought the Whalers in 1994 and soon began pressing the state of Connecticut, which owned the Civic Center, for a bigger and better facility, along with better lease terms. (Increased luxury-box seating and similar “revenue streams” figured prominently here.) Negotiations with the administration of Gov. John G. Rowland broke down. In March 1997, Karmanos announced that the current season would be his team’s last in Hartford.

Hartford Courant columnist Jeff Jacobs, who began covering the Whalers in 1984, wrote a tribute to the Whalers last Sunday, making sure to eviscerate both Karmonos and the recently re-imprisoned Rowland. One line in particular was news to me:

Rowland, from Waterbury and not a hockey guy, didn’t love the Whalers enough to do everything to save the team. General manager Jim Rutherford later told me if he had offered Karmanos anything resembling what he offered Robert Kraft to move the [New England] Patriots [to Connecticut], the NHL would still be in Hartford.

Argh!

So we are left with nostalgia. To that end, enjoy the great photo gallery that accompanies Jacobs’ column. It might also make you feel better to follow the indefatigable Hartford Whalers Booster Club on Facebook.

Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entry into World War 1, and the history magazine Connecticut Explored marks it with a Spring 2017 issue full of articles on Connecticut’s role in the war effort. One of them, written by former Hartford Courant editor David Drury, tells the story of Ruth Hovey, a Hartford nurse who was honored by the French government for her service under fire on the Western Front.

Starting in 1874, when the Hartford Dark Blues played as one of the charter members of the National League, pro and semi-pro baseball has had a few sojourns here. The most notable teams were the Hartford Senators, a minor-league operation that lasted into the 1930s, and the Hartford Chiefs, who began began play in 1938 as a farm team of the Boston Braves. When the Braves left Boston for Milwaukee after the 1952 season, the Chiefs likewise left Hartford.

The Chiefs, Senators, and other teams played at Morgan G. Bulkeley Stadium, in the South End. Built in 1927, the 6,500-seat facility fell into disuse after the Chiefs left and was demolished in 1960. In 2013, local baseball lovers installed a plaque commemorating the stadium on the grounds of Ellis Manor, a rehabilitation and health care facility that now occupies the site.

For more on the stadium, here’s an article that stadium buff Norm Hausmann wrote for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).